R.I.P. Florida Homeowner's Insurance

What’s worse is the hail claims. Whenever there is a hail storm the “roofers” are out in droves knocking on doors to inspect those old roofs with a ball pen hammer…

Had one a few years ago on a house with an older roof the guy just couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t let go up on my roof. He just kept saying “why don’t you want a new roof for free”.

 

You’re in large part correct. The house built in the 80’s suck all the way around.

Good thing is my new house 2021 codes impact windows, 2 story CB, metal roof gets really good rates. 3k per year for 750k of coverage. 40% less than what the prior house on the same property was with 200k less on coverage A

 

Hey Q. Let's see what comes of this "investigation" into the vaccines. I expect it to have the same result as the Disney special district fiasco. Lots of theater and no action. Time will tell.

Many options to fix the insurance situation without screwing the average homeowner but that's not the route they took.

 

Basically eliminated the coverage from policies, and offered a buy back endorsement if you did an inspection - except in the 4 counties where it was the biggest problem, where you can only get the downgraded form of the coverage.

 

Definitely not fixed. I got a quote last week for a home renovation. The GC also does roofs. He told me he'd also climb up on our roof and "take a look" about a roof replacement while he does the renovation....

 

Yeah, they also kneecapped one-way attorney fees a couple times too. As with AOBs it looks like they are just going to get rid of them period, because they are all out of ideas.

 

Seems like ultimately insurance in Florida is going to have to become completely public. Thr state is already providing Citizens, and now they're doing a billion in reinsurance. Remove the profit. It's not like govt bureaucracy is gonna be worse than what's already the insurance boondoggle

 

It isn't "most" that are blatant fraud. Yes, it's happening, it's a piece of the problem, and it needs to be stopped. But it isn't anywhere close to "most". I mentioned this upthread, but my wife has worked a career as an attorney in this area, nearly 20 years. On every side - plaintiff, defense, and even in-house legal at one of the insurance companies. Today she's a neutral mediator. Literally thousands of cases. Only a handful of outright fraud cases that she ever touched. Low double digits out of thousands.

Well that's one possibility (although there may be some legal strategies where the insurance company is still on the hook for fees). But you have to understand the problem this introduces. Say a storm damages your roof and you have water intrusion that damages up some interior walls, your kitchen cabinets, and wood flooring. Let's say it's legitimately going to be $100k to fix everything. But you get a rookie desk adjuster, he does a bad job putting information into xactimate and comes up with $30k, which is basically a wash with your hurricane deductible. A claims manager rubber stamps the rookie's bad estimate, and you get a "did not meet deductible letter". (Trust me, this happens ALL THE TIME) You then go the legal route, now you incur $20-30k in legal fees to get the insurance company to properly adjust the claim. So now to fix your $100k in damage, you take off a $30k deductible, plus another $30k in legal fees. Oh, and that public adjuster you hired to get an independent estimate to fight the insurance company, that's another 10%/$10k. So you went the difficult route, took 2 years, and now you'll net just $30k to fix your $100k in damage.

The whole point of the old fee statute was that the homeowner would still receive enough funds to repair the house. Make no mistake, this bill is exactly what the insurance companies wanted, and your rights as a policyholder are decreased. It *might* save you money years from now, TBD. But I wouldn't bet on it.

 

The litigious side of it is the main issue on commercial liability abs commercial auto. I'm less familiar with the homeowner side of things. With commercial lines, it's cheaper to just pay put on lawsuits less than like 40k instead of paying the lawyer fees. If there's an accident involving a commercial vehicle you just expect to get sued no matter the details.

 

My neighbor took the direct payment and never did any repairs. Don’t think they truly had a real issue. Built a pool and had a settling crack if memory serves me correct. Banked $100K and let the house go after a divorce. New neighbors got a steal but do have sinkhole attached. Think they can have it reevaluated after a certain amount of time?

I also remember when we bought our building and the insurance companies would question every settling crack. Had our first policy cancelled after two months for it. The picture they sent to say it was a settling crack was a straight line as it was where an addition was added. It had nothing to do with a crack. Interesting times…

 

Does anyone have a good link to an objective summary of the changes, whether proposed or passed?

 

Saw your neighbors scenario hundreds of times. There are untold thousands of homes where the ‘sinkhole’ wasnt disclosed to unsuspecting buyers as well.
Still involved with several remaining cases from years and years ago.

 

We receive the pitch from the roofing people (not even the actual roofers, just a contracting company). They encourage us to call our insurance company. We do, even asked about the roof scam. They explained to us that to avoid the roofing scam that's been taking place, they select their own inspector and send him out. I felt relieved of my moral obligation as the duty has officially been handed off to the experts with full disclosure, fully aware of what has been taken place. I was blown away when they said that we had storm damage and were due for a new roof. We were already due for a new roof, even if there was storm damage, why wouldn't the cost be prorated in some capacity? My guess is the numbers make sense because they planned on distributing my cost with increased rates down the line (the same thing they did with another incident they had). I was blown away when I saw our renewal rate (more than double) - even though we were assured (verbally, not in writing, by the roofing contracting company) that they couldn't raise our rates for this. Naturally, we switched companies. The new company's representative asked us about whether or not we've had a claim for a roof. I told him exactly what happened, and we still got the lowest rate we've had in about 10 years. The "wind mitigation" inspector that came out from that company told us that you have to switch companies every few years to get the best deals. When/if that dries up, we'll switch to self-insuring. Just about ready to pull the trigger on that now. It's a crooked (at worst) or inefficient (at best) industry all around; would love to be free of insurance companies and deal directly with workers when/if a needed situation arises. We've had 2 other "incidents" in 20 years; one we went through insurance company for (nightmare, complete with over-charging and premium hikes) and one we didn't (~$5000 total in repairs). I asked one of the workers if he thought I should file a claim for the work or not, and he said, simply, "if I can pay for it, I don't file." I think those are wise words to live by; I plan on extending that willingness to spend to cover the full cost of the house. I need to learn more about liability and if there are any other tricks to managing that, but in terms of structural damage, get me out of the insurance industry.

Go GATORS!
,WESGATORS

 

When you bought your insurance policy, one of the choices you (or you agent) implicitly made was rather to pay for depreciated value or replacement value coverage.

 

This is absolutely true. I hadn't thought about that until you mentioned it. Had to double-check the new coverage to make sure that wasn't where the cost savings were. Ha. For a "depreciated value" coverage, presumably, the premiums decrease a little each year?

Go GATORS!
,WESGATORS

 

This video of an adjuster went viral a little while back. I'm aware of unscrupulous roofers and think they should be held accountable but so should adjusters and companies that pull this kind of stuff.

 

If the cost of repairs is obviously less then the deductible then maybe you shouldn’t file. If the expected repairs are close to or likely greater than the deductible then you should file, that’s pretty much why you have insurance in the first place
(to cover losses in excess of your deductible), Implicitly the amount of risk you are taking is “up to” the deductible and the insurance is expected to pick up the rest. If you are paying for damages above the deductible or the insurance companies lowball you then effectively you are both self-insuring AND giving away premiums to an insurer.

I guess if a person is comfortable handling any repair they should either self insure or have a very large $50k deductible so insurance only kicks in for catastrophic loss to the property. But that would only be for properties owned free and clear, most mortgage companies *require* certain levels of coverage to underwrite a mortgage.

 

This is what I used to think, but then throw in the fact that your premiums will go up if you have a claim, then you are effectively paying for the repair anyway (and still paying a premium) - over time, you will have spent more than the cost of the repair (so it ends up being a perpetual loan).

And yes, this is more along the lines of what we'd be looking for.

Go GATORS!
,WESGATORS

 

This one was disclosed. I almost bought the house with the sinkhole attached to it as the bank ended up taking a 75% haircut at the time. New neighbors had to insure through Lloyds at the time I believe…

 

I don’t know about how the “fraud” is supposed to work, are we saying people whose roofs weren’t even touched by a hurricane are getting new roofs? Why wouldn’t cases like that just be laughed out of court?

I imagine there might be gray areas where maybe the damage was wind/hurricane and maybe it’s just because the roof was old and couldn’t take it, or maybe when the water damage/leaks takes a few months down the road to start showing (something we had from Irma). But in those cases it’s up to the policy. If you are paying for “full replacement” coverage and get hit by a hurricane, then it doesn’t actually matter the age of the roof, it’s insured for a full replacement. I guess if people have zero leaks and are just looking for a new roof I’d look at it a bit skeptically, but if you see issues or there are drips in the ceiling right after the storm, it’s hard to side with an insurance company trying to minimize or even decline those claims.